good to the greatest number"--the "greatest number" in such instances
being always, of course, the wreckers. A wrecked vessel was their
legitimate prey, and the inhabitants of many coastal parts are known to
have deeply resented the building of lighthouses where wrecks were
frequent. In his notes to _The Pirate_, Sir Walter Scott mentions that
the rent of several of the islands in Shetland had greatly fallen since
the Commissioners of Lighthouses ordered lights to be established on the
Isle of Sanda and the Pentland Skerries. And he tells of the reflection
cast upon Providence by a certain pious island farmer, the sails of
whose boat were frail from age and greatly patched: "Had it been _His_
will that a light hadna been placed yonder," said he, with pious
fervour, "I wad have had enough of new sails last winter."

Then as to the saving of life--in those days, and well on into the
eighteenth century, it was believed to be a most unlucky thing to save a
drowning person; he was sure eventually to do his rescuer some deadly
injury. A similar belief, as regards the ill luck, prevails in China to
this day; nothing will induce a Chinaman to help a drowning man from the
water. In our own case, probably this superstition as to ill luck
originated in the obvious fact that if there were no survivor from a
wreck, there could be no one to interfere with the claim made by the
finders to what they considered their lawful due. If a vessel drove
ashore on their coast, that surely was the act and the will of God, and
it was not for them to question His decrees or to thwart His intentions.

Many, since the days of the wreckers, have been the ships cast away
along that rugged coast-line which starts southward from the grim
promontory of St. Abb's Head, and runs, cruelly rock-girt or stretched
in open bay of yellow sand, away past Berwick and down by Holy Island.
Many have been the disasters, pitiful on occasion the loss of life. But